I picked up spacemacs earlier this year but have since switched to Doom emacs: https://github.com/hlissner/doom-emacs it's smaller, faster, and you configure it in a way that's closer to vanilla emacs. The size makes it more tractable to learn. The creator & primary maintainer is more active, funny, and helpful than the spacemacs maintainer who I believe is on hiatus.
I wish someone had told Doom about it before I picked up spacemacs so maybe this post will benefit past-future-me.
I wish someone had told Doom about it before I picked up spacemacs so maybe this post will benefit past-future-me.